The Presence of Absence: Catalytic and Omnipresent Offstage Characters in Modern American Drama

Abstract

As American plays based on the absent center suggest, both onstage characters and the audiences join in a quest for the unseen characters in an attempt to unravel their identities. Despite their absence these unseen characters act as driving forces of the dramatic onstage action. Thus, ignoring the importance of offstage characters would certainly leave their respective plays rather incomplete and dramatically unsound. These absent characters function as a proximate cause for the onstage action, and without them all of the plays discussed would lose their vivacity and their structural integrity would collapse. Here, Mahfouz discusses the absent figures in modern American drama.